XCOM Enemy Unknown

I've searched for a thread about this game and could not find it. This is an XCOM remake from Firaxis. I've seen a couple videos and it looks to be very nice. Be warned, both videos have some spoiler content.

In this video they talk about the base and the different facilities, which look very good I must say, they also talk about the trade offs the player has to make, emphasizing some facilities over others, nice strategic element.

Being that it comes from Firaxis (albeit without Brian Reynolds) I have my hopes up for this one, however as pointed in some of the comments, the teams look to be of up to 6 marines only, infinite ammo, no base attacks by the aliens and no random terrain, so I don't know. AFAIK Xenonauts will have random terrain, but the combat does not look as good as the one in XCOM EU from what I've seen. What do you guys think?

When Civ5 was in development, I shut my brain off and told myself I was going to buy it first day. Fortunately reality intervened and I didn't have the funds to get it that day, and had to settle for reading the early reviews, and I'm glad I did, because it kept me from wasting my money and time on it. As much as I loved the originals, XCOM *will not* be a first day purchase for me, there's too much that they seem to be leaving out from the originals, and with the benefit of hindsight from Civ5, I'll be perusing the early reviews with a very critical eye before pulling the trigger. About the best thing I could say about it so far is that it at least *looks* like what I hoped a next-gen XCOM would look like, now all that's left to see is what the gameplay is like.

I'm optimistic about this title. They've taken out the things I hated, like time units and multiple full-service bases, and focused on more tactical game play. This pleases me. I still want to see how they expand radar/intercept coverage once your base is set.

I've followed this casually since it was announced and also went to their PAX panel. As a huge X-Com fan I'm sad about some of the simplifications they've made, but it still looks like it could be a fun game. Unless there's some really awful pre-release buzz or reveals, I'll be picking it up and will give it a try although I know I ought to do the smart thing and give it a month and get a better read from reviews and how people feel after the 3-5 week "new, shiney" buzz wears off.

This is only the second game I will actually be pre-ordering and in the collectors edition. The first was Civ3 and that didn't turn out all that well. On that one I more or less ignored the previews and let my fan-boy status for all things Civ get the best of me, I do have a nice tin to keep things in though.

When it was first announced that there was going to be a new x-com I was overjoyed, until I learned it was going to be a FPS. That soured me on XCom so much I just ignored all new announcements on XCom after that. When I was browsing the Firaxis site for something I was quite pleasantly surprised when I found out that Firaxis was doing a TBS XCom game.

After seeing all the coverage from E3, all the demo footage, and all of the interviews I'm sure this is a game I want to try. I'm given hope because the people working on the game are huge fans of the original and they work for Firaxis and today no one does TBS as well as Firaxis.

I'm really looking forward to this one. I think they're doing a great job, but after watching the videos, I was wondering how they would pull off base invasions. Looks like you answered it for me in the OP.

I gotta say, it's the little things that helped make X-COM so fun. Not being able to have your base invaded makes me very sad. It could be annoying to have a small listening post style base with a skeleton crew get invaded, but that really added something to the game too. Having a large squad touch down with only a few veterans was pretty sweet too. Sometimes I'd send out the rookies as fodder/training. Other times I would send out the whole squad (however many, like 16+) to make a net. It would be really cool when a small group of 3 or so guys were checking out a gas station and get taken out. I guess that can't really happen in this style. Having such a small group also makes me really really not want to lose anyone. In the original I would save before every turn, and my top ranked guys would always get a reload if something went horrible, but I'd let the rookies die often. In this, I wonder if there will be any red-shirts at all.

But it sounds like there are other small things that they kept intact, like being able to name your soldiers. I always thought it was funny naming them after my friends/family, it made it that much more important that they don't die.

It looks like a great game, I just still don't understand why we have to lose cool stuff when we're supposed to be progressing forward with technology. Oh well, I'll almost definitely buy it regardless.

Also, I wasn't aware of Xenonauts, I'll definitely have to check that one out now. Thanks.

You can zoom in on various areas of your base (gym, cafeteria, firing range) and see YOUR DUDES walking around. That struck me as pretty cool, even if it is really just eye candy.

In your base is a memorial to all of your fallen soldiers, with their names on a big black wall, which suggests they expect a certain number of them to die and for you to not reload.

Then there is Iron Man mode, where autosaves are the only saves. No reloading. Only tears.

While there won't be base attacks, there will still be politics and funding. Troop morale is also still a thing; when your sergeant gets capped, expect your rookies to flip out. When asked about Chrysallids, psionics, or Cydonia, the CR responded with a hearty "We haven't talked much about late game..." and moved on to the next question.

You will have to spend an action reloading your weapons, but you won't have to worry about putting ammo in your backpack vs your belt vs your thigh pocket. Nor will you be able to pick up your fallen comrades' weapons off the ground.

You will have to spend an action reloading your weapons, but you won't have to worry about putting ammo in your backpack vs your belt vs your thigh pocket. Nor will you be able to pick up your fallen comrades' weapons off the ground.

This makes me sad. I remember playing TFTD heavily and doing the "training" missions like Kilgaine described. Just a boat full of rookies, and one veteran who stays on the ship. One Gauss rifle with 2 mags. Send the first poor sap out there. He caps an alien, another guy comes out to pick up the alien's weapon. (Obviously this takes place later once alien weapons are known) They cap another alien. Another guy comes out and grabs that alien's weapon. Hilarity ensues any way that this works out, short of the veteran getting MC'd after everyone else is dead.

I used to somewhat hand-select my veterans by their stats mostly going by their ability to resist psionic attacks. Like you said, I would leave the commander on the transport usually, and in late game he would have the remote controlled missile launcher, which was pretty awesome.

It sucked when things really went bad though. Even if he didn't get mind controlled, sometimes he would outright panick and drop the gun and wander around an alien base. That was usually a reload. Then again, I think I distinctly remember having a few missions that failed horribly, where only a few rookies were still alive, a few mind controlled, and just taking off with only the commander onboard, ditching the rest. They were expendable!!!

But this does make me wonder how they will handle stats. Before it was totally random, and sometimes you would get a guy who couldn't pick up a rocket launcher and walk more than one square, or people who would panick almost immediately (or be mind controlled and shoot your entire squad in the back with autofire heavy plasma )

I don't like the changes they made such as no base invasions, only six members, and not being able to loot bodies for ammo. Xenonauts also has significant changes such as no telekinesis or blaster bombs. Lame. Still, TBS is so rare nowadays that I'm going to get both.

I know I'm not alone in wanting an HD remake of XCOM for the Samsung Tab or iPad. Just update the sprites. They could port it over to PC/Mac for mouse control. Short of that I don't think we'll ever be happy with the various changes.

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It could be annoying to have a small listening post style base with a skeleton crew get invaded, but that really added something to the game too.

I used to setup my listening posts with radar, 8-10 plasma defense, 3 fusion ball defense, 300 elerium, and a grav unit. That thing would take out battleships no problem.

Xenonauts also has significant changes such as no telekinesis or blaster bombs. Lame. Still, TBS is so rare nowadays that I'm going to get both.

I can't say that's a bad move. Psionics and blaster bombs really did break the game pretty badly.

This is true, but I feel like they could have balanced those items instead of taking them out completely. It does make Xenonauts more down to earth and conventional than the other XCOM titles which become pretty exotic in the late game.

When asked about Chrysallids, psionics, or Cydonia, the CR responded with a hearty "We haven't talked much about late game..." and moved on to the next question.

From the coverage I've seen it looks like the Chrysalids(not sure of the spelling) will be back along with psionics. That's about all they have given up on the late game.

I went to Amazon and found the X-Com collection for $2.99 for all 5 of the first games. The first two were all that I was interested in. It is a download playable via Steam though. I did take a while to relearn the interface after several years of no X-Com. I've put about 20 hours into it so far. I hope that Faraxis can maintain the feel of the original and then I will be a happy camper.

IMHO, psionics were great- scary and put the onus of action on the humans, and that same scariness made it so cool when you got them for yourself. I'm sad to hear about their absence in Xenonauts and their late-game-ness in Enemy Unknown.

I'm not sorry to see blaster bombs go, although they'd be better if they kept them in but nerfed them somewhat. (make them a lot less maneuverable and not have perfect accuracy, frex)

The lack of base defense does disappoint me because it was so scary when that would happen out of the blue, but hopefully they've given you plenty to be afraid of. The size of the team I actually kind of like, it makes it harder if anything.

I used to like specializing my bases. I'd have a manufacturing base, a research base, a couple of interceptor heavy bases etc. Usually my main base is where most of my troops were, and arranging shipments of weapons around the world was micromanaging at its best, but I enjoyed having specialized bases with heavy defenses and a self-defense squad.

Am I to understand from your comment that you just get the one base now?

I think the cool thing about the original games is that there are so many ways people can play it, everyone can play it in their own different way. The new one seems to reduce this flexibility, they want to you to play it their way, which is kind of sad. Still, I'll probably get this having been starved of xcom games for so long.

They've already talked about it a bit. It's 1v1, XCOM vs Aliens. So nothing really to do with base mechanics or anything, but just combat scenarios. It is however, apparently the first time players will get to play as the Aliens, which could be a lot of fun.